


the hollow in my chest waits for your heart

by vaguelysatirical



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: ALL THE TROPES BC IM A STUPID SLUT FOR THEM, Best Friends to Lovers, F/F, Mutual Pining, brainy as the autistic vampire king of nia nals fuckin dreams, i use vampire lore liberally and make it up as i go, imra as mon els vengeful ex and the delightful guide to the vampire side, kara as internalized homophobia doesn't have a thing on vampirism, lena as the sad gay kind of witch of the group n like we gon get u some therapy honey we will, nia as not human but valid and semi normal, sam as the incredibly handsome werewolf who reigns out once a full moon, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:47:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22663459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguelysatirical/pseuds/vaguelysatirical
Summary: "I felt you," Lena says, voice quiet, muffled against Kara chest, like she's speaking to her heart, the same one that would race at Lena's smile and now laid dormant and still. "I felt you die, Kara. I felt this connection between us wither away. That's... that's not nothing."Kara doesn't feel the need to breath, not anymore, but she still does. She sighs so heavily Lena bobs up on her, in her arms. "No," she agrees, voice just as quiet, pressing her lips to Lena's head. "It's not."~Kara's dead. She didn't mean to die. In fact, she's doing her best to not die again, and become human again.It's difficult, Imra tells her. Brainy agrees. Nia shrugs and Sam mouths, good luck. Lena stands beside them all and tries to smile her most encouraging smile, the one that says it'll be a piece of cake, or something, because, all she has to do is kill the man who killed her.In truth, Lena's smile looks more like a grimace. Kara pretends not to notice.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 28
Kudos: 108





	1. the beginning of an eternal end

**Author's Note:**

> t/w: physical violence from a romantic interest; blood; some gore ig? 
> 
> I REWROTE THIS BAD BOY kind of

As she lay dying, throat torn open, Kara felt little anything other than remorse.

And pain, of course. Pain so excruciating, so mind bending, so consuming, it became a new normal. It would be her new normal for the rest of her life. Which, she assumed, would only last a few minutes now. She was sure no one survived a mauling, and especially if that mauling was to the throat.

The sky above her, though hidden behind the tangles of green leaves and knotted branches, is lighter than it was an hour ago. The wind scrapes by with an inaudible howl, drags cold fingers over her exposed shoulders and the gaping hole that was her throat. Early morning, Kara thinks. Still dark, of course, this was Midvale. She had always marveled at the stars. She lived in a big, smoggy city for almost 15 years of her life, and it still stunned her to be able to just look up, and see the stars. 

She can't see them now, though.

Her date, which was happening until a few seconds ago, was fine. And it was only fine because she wasn’t into him. But he was charismatic and his breath smelled good and she remembered feeling guilty because she couldn’t stop thinking about her best friend. She had thought, _this is a calm, nice guy, and here I am, wasting his money and time, because I can’t stop thinking about Lena. God, I am such a dick._

He’s digging like a madman right now, though. Frantic movements, jerky, like he’s jittery. She lazily glances, and she can see her former date and urgently working at the damp soil with his hands. He's made some headway, now, seeing as she can't see his legs, only his upper body is visible. He's bending down into what she's sure will be her final resting place and then coming back up with a mound of dirt cradled in his arms. His lower face is just, gross, covered in her blood and little bits of what she's sure is her flesh. She regrets saying yes to him, regrets blowing off Lena, oh Rao does she regret it. Regrets going to dinner with him. Regrets kissing him. Regrets walking into the woods with him.

He hadn’t eaten dinner. Said he wasn’t hungry, and pushed her fork away when she offered it. He had this smile on his face, looking a bit like a smirk, but it was dumb looking. Kara hadn't wanted to say anything, but the mini Alex in her head was just absolutely tearing him to shreds. And she felt bad for that, immediately chiding herself, telling her that he was new, and cute, and that was rare in Midvale. She was lucky. 

The pain becomes hazy and far away, so she doesn’t pay it any mind. Instead, she watches him, and thinks about how she’ll never see sunlight again. Streams of it, golden and warm, lighting up half of the world, and she’d never see it. She’s going to be buried in a small, dark hole, and she will never see sunlight again. She will never see Lena, or Alex, or Eliza, or Jeremiah. Not her parents. Not the stars, and not the pictures on her phone or in a scrap book. She will never paint, she will never eat, will never enjoy anything, not ever again. Come noon, and she would be dead, buried, food for worms.

She shouldn't have gone on that stupid date. That's the remorse.

He grunts, loudly, after making an appropriately sized hole in the ground. There’s a small hill of damp dirt beside it, his fingers and hands reduced to these sort of brown red clawed things from both her blood and the soil sticking to it. She can smell the freshly churned earth, warm and wet and full of wriggling worms. She’s hopes they’re craving something other than her. 

The sky is lavender now. Dull light peeks through the gaps, makes leaves look green instead of black, branches brown, instead of gray. Kara closes her eyes and hopes, prays, that she dies before anything else happens.

She blinks slowly, and suddenly, he’s lifting her up. She couldn’t move herself, can’t get away, even if she tried. She feels hands, slide under her, pick her up, and she's weightless. Cradled, like something small and broken and dead, against a hard, muscular chest. The rhythmic way she's being moved, she's being _moved_ -

He puts her in the ground gently, and the last thing she sees is his face and those cold eyes that look a bit regretful. He’s pink in the cheeks. Kara squeezes her eyes shut. She feels the ground underneath her. She doesn't open her eyes. The air is still. Warmer, wetter, and smells of freshly churned earth. There's a hole in the ground that her former date and soon to be murderer made and she's in it. A grave. Rao unwilling, _a grave_.

Then, he starts to bury her.

It’s slow and methodical, the way he buries her. Or maybe it’s just her dying brain, fogging up, slowing time down. But every second, an extra little weight is thrown on her, chunks of soil skittering over her body and settling, until it builds up, until she can’t breathe. Kara feels the most watered down version of panic begin to fill her. She doesn't like small spaces. She never has, but being trapped in a small space while the smell of burning corpses of your parents filled the air she was forced to breath in and out and in and out again for what felt like hours certainly exacerbated that dislike, that fear.

Still, the panic and fear is weak. Her body is weak. Her mind never was, but that too, has dulled, her thoughts trickle by like honey, or molasses, suspended in space. All movement eventually stops. The energy transfers, moves on. Kara's lashes flutter. _Where_ , she thinks sluggishly, _does it go?_

Honey, sap, molasses, crystallized. Stagnant. She slowly fades away, the pressure on her chest getting heavier and heavier, a mountain of soil only growing.

The last thing she hears is, impossibly, him. And maybe it’s a creation of her brain trying its hardest to comfort her in her last moments, no matter how horribly, but, under three feet of heavy, damp soil, she hears, “You looked so beautiful with the weight of the world on your shoulders,” a short pause, before he speaks up again, sounding regretful in only the way a young child can, superficially, shallowly: “But I was hungry.”

If her brain made it up to comfort her, she doesn’t find it very comforting. 

* * *

This is how it starts: 

There’s a new boy in town. 

Midvale, California is small, insignificant town, so tiny it was barely a blip on map. No one ever actually stops by, so when they do, the whole town is abuzz with gossip and fever bright eyes. 

People just don’t seem to know what to do with themselves, really. They’re bored. They latch onto newness with strange sort of viciousness, akin to a pack of wolves pouncing on some small hapless prey. 

Lena tells Kara that she’s relieved - thankful not to be the focal point of everyone’s judging eyes anymore. Kara... well.

The girls in their school coo on and on about him, this mysterious boy who showed up near the end of the school year, a Senior, by the sound of it. Talk about him like he’s some white knight, ready to save them from their problems. Kara wonders what it must be like to be boy-crazy; every male face suddenly a possible romantic interest, a possible life changing savior.

She’s always prided herself on being decidedly not boy-crazy. There were dozens of cute boys that the girls around her lost their minds over. But not her. Never her. 

They’re in the cafeteria, minutes away from a loud, annoying bell reminding them they need to go to fifth period. Lena sits next to her, her dark hair is pulled into a wonderfully messy bun, strands falling into her face as she leaned over her AP Physics textbook, pencil in hand. She looks enraptured by the textbook. Kara watches Lena tuck her thumb between her teeth, watches the way she furrows her dark eyebrows, and the way the pale, baby soft (it has to be, it has to, Kara is sure) skin of her slender neck bobs-

Yeah, she’s never been boy crazy. 

“Marie Curie, unsung hero,” Lena murmurs softly to herself, writing it down in her messy scrawl. Kara catches it, though. Lena was the only thing she was genuinely paying attention to, so how could she not? 

“Nerd,” Kara says softly, lips pulled upward. Lena stops reading, glances upward, and Kara’s breath hitches uncomfortably in her chest when she sees the soft smear of freckles on Lena’s high, prominent cheekbones, sees the soft, melting green of her eyes, and the way her lips are a dark pretty pink from toying with her thumb for so long. 

“Oh, whatever.” Lena pouts then, “You’re the one who gets straight A’s, Kar. If anyone’s a nerd, it’s you.”

“What? I can’t hear you over the sound of your big, genius brain, sloshing around in your skull.” Kara scrunches her nose up at the dark haired girl. 

“Gross!” Lena laughs and reaches out to shove her- what instead happens is that Lena’s fingers linger and drag against her shoulder. Kara feels them like coals against her shoulder, each fingertip trails over her, but not- not painful. Not painful at all. 

Kara feels very warm, too warm, actually, and so she asks, distractedly, after clearing her throat and pulling herself out of Lena’s reach, “Have, uh, you seen the new guy?” 

Lena’s fingers retreat immediately at the first sign of movement. “Yeah, actually.” She doesn’t offer anything more, seemingly completely disinterested. Her eyes return to her textbook.

Kara frowns. She was curious, so sue her. “How was he? I heard he’s hot. Is he?”

Lena frowns harder. “Is he what?”

“Hot, Lena! Is he _hot_?”

Lena sighs, and finally looks up again. “I don’t know- honestly, _honestly_ , Kara, he... something about him rubs me the wrong way.”

Kara frowns. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Lena huffs out a breath, a bit pink in the cheeks. “He’s in my first period, APES, and, God, all the girls- they’re so- so _moon-eyed_ over this- boy- who looks- he looks _dangerous_ , Kara. I don’t understand why girls have such an affinity for guys who _literally_ look like sociopaths.”

Kara snorts and raises her eyebrows, “Bit harsh?”

Lena shakes her head. “No, seriously, he- just something about him rubs me the wrong way, Kara. He’s-”

-coming right towards them. At least, it seems like it’s him. Kara's never seen him before. And in a town this small, it’s unlikely that she doesn’t know someone’s face. 

“Lena- _shush_ -” Kara struggles to get out in a moderately low voice, completely cutting Lena off, with wide, panicked eyes, “ _He’s walking towards us_.” Lena shuts up immediately, becoming paler than she already is, and then Kara tries and fails to relax, but she can’t help the way her eyes locate and study him.

He’s tall, lank, casually dressed. Brown hair, straight nose, and scruff on his chin, like he’s just starting to grow out a beard. Under his eyes are dark circles, and he’s unnervingly pale. Conventionally attractive. Cute. He does look a bit like one of those murderers that girls on Tumblr liked to romanticize, though. 

Suddenly, he’s standing right in front of them. She sees Lena stiffen and lean away from him, and sequentially, her. It smarts but before she can think or do anything, he’s talking. 

“Hello, ladies.” His voice is smooth and sounds like it comes from the back of his throat and straight through his nose. He's attractive, yeah. Perfectly attractive enough for the girls in Midvale to lose their minds over. Perfectly attractive enough that Kara should feel drawn to him. Perfectly attractive enough that she should feel entranced by him, consumed. He smiles, and his teeth are blindingly white, and almost impossibly straight. From the corner of her eye, Kara sees Lena’s posture tighten. 

Lena is still leaning away, trying for a polite smile that looks more like a grimace than anything else. The fact that Kara’s spent a solid ten seconds deciding Lena’s fake polite face is something of a pout instead of the tall, dark and kind of cute stranger guy standing literally in front of them makes something inside her sink. 

“What did you need?” Lena asks, after a pause. And- it’s… not exactly rude, just- tense. Short. Impatient and a little flustered. It radiates off of her, and the boy in front of them either isn’t aware, or just plain doesn’t care. Maybe Kara’s biased against him. Kara glances over at her in concern, takes in her best friend’s everything - the worn jean jacket tied around her waist and the incredibly soft knit sweater she was wearing under it, the messy bun that’s more stray fly away hairs than actual bun, the pale smooth skin and the glittering green eyes with too thick lashes and-

 _Yeah_. Yeah. 

That’s why she’s not pulled into New Boy’s orbit. _Definitely_ biased. She sucks in a sharp breath, and the aching in her chest starts up with sharp twinge. It’s hard to breathe, just a little bit, and she turns away from Lena, and focuses on his dark blue eyes. 

His dark blue eyes that are trained on Lena. “I think I have you in a class.”

Lena’s brow furrows, but she doesn’t look up. “Congrats, you and the rest of the seniors here. It’s a small school.”

“You’re crazy smart.” He says. Kara agrees, but she doesn’t like the gleam in his eye. “Lena, was it?”

“It’s a small school.” Lena repeats almost coldly, and then doesn’t confirm or deny his inquiry on her name. She simply turns her gaze downward, trains it on her book. She isn’t reading it. Kara can tell. 

“Um.” He blinks. “Okay- I don’t mean to bother-” at this, Lena’s head snaps up again, and she’s staring at him with calculating narrowed eyes. “But I don’t, uh, exactly know where my classes are and every time I try to approach people, to ask for help, they look at me like I’m a freak-” his eyes dart from Lena, who’s very much still glaring at him, to Kara. He lowers his voice, and directs his next off hand comment to her in a whisper, like it’s an inside joke, just between them, like they’re old buddies. “-kind of like of like your friend is doing right now-”

“Why didn’t you just ask a teacher?” Lena interrupts, then. Her eyes are hard, flinty, a far cry from how they looked when it was just them two. Rao. She does not like this man. And to be honest, just because of that, Kara isn’t feeling too fond of him either. She shakes the feeling off. She needs to get out of- of this mindless _Lena Lena Lena_ mentality she’s got going on, currently. 

He frowns. “I tried but-”

“I _very_ much doubt that.” Lena cuts him off jaggedly and sharp and...oddly mean. Kara feels displaced with... this whole thing, this whole attitude. 

Lena has been her best friend since they first met when Kara was thirteen and Lena was ten going on eleven. She was her peer helper, with English and pretty much everything but with an emphasis on English, since Kara didn’t speak a whole lot of it. Thirteen year old Kara was enraptured by her - this young girl with pretty green eyes and the darkest lashes who spoke solemnly and quietly, like she would get hit if she spoke above 20 decibels. She was brilliant and soft spoken and even at ten, eleven, twelve, even now, there's a vulnerability to her that Kara felt reflected her own. A kindred spirit that Kara refused to part from. 

She’s the best person Kara has ever met. A bit quiet, a bit reclusive, but the sweetest. The kindest. She cares a whole lot about the bees. She loves chemistry and physics and liked to invent things that seemed far too advanced for her age, for her hands. She’s thoughtful. And although her status as ‘ _wealthier than most people in the world’_ and ‘ _sister to Lex Luthor_ ’ made everyone wary of her, it didn’t mean that they had anything to fear. 

Looking at her now, though, Kara thinks, the dark slant of her eyebrows, pointed downwards in a hard glare, face like a statue in terms of beauty and mercilessness, with that odd flex in her jaw, it’s not hard to see why other people avoid her. Kara’s always thought they were foolish for doing so, that they were missing out on arguably one of the best humans in this galaxy, and they are, absolutely, but it’s not hard to see why other people avoid her. 

Lena turns to Kara, gathering everything in her arms, her tone still oddly hard. “We need to go, Kar. Class starts up in a few minutes.”

“I-um. He needs help?” Kara feels a lot of things. The immediate and overwhelming warmth of having Lena’s pretty eyes on her, the concern for Lena, because seriously, is she okay? And some sort of sheepish embarrassment because Lena was very much glaring at a kid who was attractive and very new. 

Lena seems to close off even more. She seems coiled and controlled and Kara can see the way her jaw twitches again before she moves her head in a quick, jerky nod. Then, without another word, she sweeps off and practically storms away. 

Kara watches her go with a horrible feeling - it feels like her chest has caved in, and Rao. She needs to let go- of- of this stupid... _obsession_. It's not okay, and it's not natural, either. She breathes in sharply, and the abruptly cold air in the cafeteria feels like someone’s taken knitting needles to her lungs, puncturing and poking and savaging. Lena’s combat boots echo, and Kara just barely catches the sight of her dark figure leaving before she exhales. 

“Is she... always so...?” He asks cautiously, trailing off.

Kara hopes that her expression was rueful instead of whatever expression she’s surely making. She imagines her face resembles a wife’s, watching her husband go off to war. Worried and heartbroken. 

Instead, she tries for a smile, and says, “Lena’s usually kinder to newcomers. Must’ve been a bad day.” After a pause, she turns to the new boy with a large, beaming smile. It feels a bit more natural this time, a bit more genuine: after all, it isn’t every day you get a new student in Midvale, and she’s interested. “I’m Kara. Hi. You’re new.”

His lips curl upward. His eyes aren't amused. “Yes, hi. It’s nice to meet you, Kara. I’m Mike.” 

She smiles back slightly hesitantly, pushing away the twinge of unease, shuffling up her glasses. “What’re your classes?”

When he smiles, she notices his canines, his incisors, are a tad bit too sharp. But then he’s handing his papers over and muttering, _thank you, thank you,_ and she’s properly distracted. 

When he asks her out, a little while later, she says yes, hoping maybe she’ll fly out of Lena’s orbit and into his.

* * *

It sours like this: 

Kara tells Lena about her soon-to-be-date on Friday, aware of the weekly Friday hangouts of theirs, and more than aware of the damage she’s about to do. She tells her this on Friday, because she’s cowardly and also an idiot.

After Kara tells her, Lena clams up. Hunches her shoulders, and the proceeds to ignore her for the rest of a period they usually spend trying to smother their laughter. 

Lena is angry. Kara knew she would be. Friday nights are theirs, are special, are sacred, and she’s calling it off to go on a date with a boy she’s sure she doesn’t like and never will. 

Usually, they watch movies and eat takeout, sometimes, they try and fail to raid Eliza’s wine cabinet and other times, they go out to have fun. Most times, though, they talk, and laugh, and are generally silly. And now, Kara would be breaking a tradition that’s existed since seventh grade. For a stupid date. 

Outside of class, outside of school, as they walk home together, Lena seems to have gathered her thoughts. 

“So.” She starts. “You’re blowing me off for a fucking school shooter?” Lena is angry, and Kara knows her well enough to know that when Lena feels any kind of bad, she lashes out. Maybe not obviously, but Lena has her tells and again, Kara knows her well enough to know them. It’s told many ways, all the ways except verbally: the tightness in her jaw, the slight burrow in her strong brow, the way her fingers twitch. 

She’s pissed and she’s hurt and she feels betrayed. And it makes something inside Kara twist, to see her best friend like this, and know she’s the cause. 

She doesn’t know what to say. 

(Actually, she does. She wants to say, _I’m so desperately infatuated with you, have been since I was, like, fourteen, that I find it hard to breathe around you sometimes and it’s not okay, and I know it's not okay, I know it's gross, and I've tried so hard to get over you and nothing has worked and maybe, maybe this will work. Let me try, let me go._

But Kara’s always been good at controlling herself, at restraint. She had an A plus in discipline. She is her father’s daughter, after all. 

Her father had always said she didn’t cry like the other babies did. He was proud when he told her that. The broad, sweeping way he spoke, the gleam in his eye - it was one of the few times her father had ever been proud of her. He told her that Zor El's were controlled, calm - you cannot ever let anyone see your cards, he had told her. He died about four years later, but Kara always remembered his words.

She refused to cry when her aunt died when she was seven. She refused to cry when she was ten and had just dislocated her shoulder, and she refused to cry when it was popped back in. She refused to cry when she realized what the fluttering feelings she got around Lena meant when she was fourteen. She refused to cry when Lena got her first boyfriend at that same year. She cried like a baby when she woke up in a hospital and was told in bad Russian that her parents were gone, but she was allowed. She didn’t cry after that month. 

It created some psychological issues, Kara's sure, like repression and anger problems, but it was what it was, and Kara’s too tired and too used to herself to break habits.)

What comes out is this: “He’s _not_ a- _a school shooter_ ,” she whispers _school shooter_ , partially because it’s taboo and partially because Lena’s big brother is a school shooter and Lena tends to coil up into herself when people mention it. “He’s nice and he asked me out and I’m sorry, but, yeah, I’m bailing.”

Lena clenches her teeth. They glint white against her dark pink lips, and Kara decidedly did not stare at her mouth for longer than three seconds. “Fine.” she says.

It’s anything but, and they both know it. 

* * *

It starts to end like this: 

Mike is interesting. He’s a bit weird, though. He didn’t order any food, says he isn’t hungry yet. Kara doesn’t care enough to ask why and that, in and of itself, is the gist of the problem, isn’t it?

She doesn’t _care_. Here Mike was, new and cute and cool, across from her in a tiny, incredibly inauthentic Chinese restaurant that claimed to be authentic, who she’s sure all the girls in her school would love to be with, and _she doesn’t care_.

She forces herself to listen, though. 

He’s been to lots of places. He speaks smooth and sure and eloquently. Very knowledgeable. Likes history. Has a weird relationship with his mom, “she really does put the mother in smother.” When Mike said that, he’d done a little twist to his face, like he was trying to smirk and be funny, but all it did was remind Kara of Lena, who could smirk, and very well at that 

He’s considerate, too. Whenever he says something about himself, he’s sure to counter it with a, “what about you?” and a “did you go through that too?” and even a “tell me more about yourself?” He’s not a self centered person, or at least he’s been on enough dates to know when to stop talking about himself. 

A person who goes on and on about themselves without bothering to ask you about yourself makes for a bad date, Lena told her once, decisively, in Sophomore year, with fire in her eyes, after a senior boy asked her out and she ‘made the mistake of going out with him.’

Kara can barely force herself to answer the questions he asks her. If it had been Lena or like, a school essay, she would explain herself, talk like her life depended on it, but it wasn’t. It was Mike, a boy she found interesting, but in a school friend kind of way. In a ‘ _we can only really talk about shallow, concrete things in class to pass the time: what’s the latest gossip again?_ ’ kind of way. It actually kind of hurt how uninterested she was in him. 

She listens as intently as she can, but finds herself trying to imagine herself kissing his thin lips, hugging him, dating him, and while she’s sure she can do it, she doesn’t exactly want to. Still, though, he’s not... repulsive. He’s interesting. 

Or, Kara guesses, he’s not, because to be interesting, you need to inspire fascination into the audience, make them want to hear about you. Mike doesn’t do that to her. She sort of collects all the information on him, listening, but not hearing, or maybe listening, and hearing, but not resonating. 

Whatever. 

He asks her, “Did you grow up here?” 

And she says, “Sort of.” and _that’s it._

She can’t bring herself to go on from there. And that’s when they both get a bit quiet. It’s awkward. Mike looks a bit put off. Kara cannot even imagine the face she’s pulling right now. She doesn’t want to. 

Really, all she wants is to go home to Lena, and watch Netflix with her and tell her all about this shitty date. 

She’d say, ‘ _it wasn’t him, it was me,’_ and Lena would ask, in surprise, _‘what? Why? What do you mean? You’re perfect?’_ and Kara would reply, smoothly, ‘ _oh thank you, but it’s just that I’m like, in love with you.’_ and Lena would look like her dreams came true and she’d say, _‘oh my god, I’m in love with you too,_ ’ and then they’d end up making out.

Wishful thinking. Lena would probably scream, and then slap her, and then she'd tell the Danvers' and Kara would get kicked out of the only home she's ever been welcomed in. Or, maybe, Kara thinks, maybe Lena'd be cool with it. They're best friends, after all.

If Lena came to her, said she was in love with her- not a good hypothetical situation, Kara would probably kneel over and like, die, so that's out- okay. Hm. If Lena came to her and said she was actually a... an alien, from a dead planet, Kara would... Kara stills in thought. What would she do? Kara like's to think she'd be sympathetic, but she doesn't know. What if Lena ripped off her skin and tentacles replaced her face and garbled out, _'I'm still your best friend, Kara_ '? Bad scenario. Bad scenario. But, Kara thinks, alien tentacle Lena is right - she _is_ still her best friend. The only thing is- 

Kara doesn’t even know if they’re friends anymore. She doubts that they’re not, they’ve been friends since like, seventh grade, but it’s Lena and when she’s hurt by someone, the closer they are, the more severe the cut off. They’re best friends, and what if the cut off is like... _the_ cut off?

She shivers.

Mike coughs lightly to get her attention, and her eyes snap towards him, immediately guilty. Rao unwilling-

“Where’d you go just then?” He asks, voice soft. 

And Kara just laughs, feeble and sheepish and the tiniest bit bitter, and shrugs. 

* * *

It ends like this:

“Let’s go on a walk through the woods.” Mike suggests. 

“Okay,” Kara agrees. She’s ready to be taken home, but...the date sucked and she’s not sure if Mike noticed, so she’ll let him have this. “It’s a bit dark, though.”

Mike smiles and again, Kara’s attention is caught by his teeth. They’re... _too_ long, she thinks. _Too_ white. _Too_ sharp. She shivers. “I don’t mind if you don’t,” he says. 

Kara looks away and keeps her voice light. “I don’t mind.”

She doesn’t see him, but she can hear the smile in his voice. “Good.”

The woods isn’t hard to find. It’s the only thing around for a few miles, actually. It surrounds the entire town, and that’s why it’s so little. They walk a little, off road, and sooner rather than later, only trees surround them. 

Kara doesn’t go wandering in the woods often. Only during the daytime, and usually only with Lena. But it’s beautiful. The woods are quiet, with the occasional caw of a bird and the subtle chirping of the crickets. About half the sky is blocked by branches, but from what she can see, the stars are winking and shockingly bright. She always feels a bit startled, when she sees them. She makes a promise to bring Lena into the woods at night, so she can marvel at the stars with her. 

In a few minutes, Kara turns around and she can’t see any streetlights. She can’t see Mike’s car lights. The deeper they walk, the further they get from, like, civilization. She’s sure she’s never gone this far into the woods before. 

“Maybe we should turn back,” she suggests, frowning. “I can’t see your car.”

Mike doesn’t seem to acknowledge her with anything but a shake of his head. There’s a ball of dread that’s growing in her stomach, making her queasy. 

In the dark, with only the moon and the stars to illuminate any sort of path, Mike looks... _different_. He looks more comfortable, and his steps become slower and steadier, almost inaudible, which was crazy, because the ground was littered with twigs and dead leaves and probably maggots and other gross things...

“I want to leave.” She says, plaintively. She stops in her wake, and goes to turn around, when Mike grabs her arm. Fear stills her, and she inhales sharply, trying to ward it off. 

“But I’m hungry.” He says back. 

Kara rolls her eyes, shaking his hand off. “I told you, you should’ve eaten at the restaurant.” She sighs. She can see his eyes, and only his eyes, in this near darkness. They almost look as though they’re glowing. “Let’s go back. I don’t wanna get lost and you’re hungry. Win-win.”

Mike smiles, and it’s… not a normal smile. It’s cold and full of dark mirth and it looks awfully mocking and it takes a second before Kara realizes that it’s aimed at her. The ball of dread in her stomach grows bigger, twisting and curling around her lungs and heart and _squeezing_. 

“Silly rabbit,” he murmurs. He reaches out, and grabs her again, tighter this time. “Why would I want to go back when my dinner is finally ready?”

Her scream starts up a second after that, and then is cut off shortly. 

The crickets continue chirping. 

* * *

She begins again like this:

She doesn’t know how long it’s been when she wakes up after her burial. It might’ve been seconds, weeks, days, years, months. She doesn’t know. Only that she’s awake after a period of time that is blank and empty in her head, and she feels different. 

The weight on top of her chest is comforting now, the pressure welcoming. Less suffocating. She tries sucking in a lungful of air, and finds herself inhaling small crumbs and clumps of dirt, and it’s more bothersome than alarming. 

In fact, the only reason she starts to rip herself out of the ground she was so meticulously placed in is because it bugged her that she couldn’t inhale air that was dirt-free. 

In old zombie movies, the ones she and Lena would watch, zombies, freshly arisen, shot their hands out of their graves, like it was easy. She and Lena would debate: was it really? Is it really that easy? 

The undead person got out of packed, tight dirt, dirt that had set and stilled. Not to mention, heavy. _Yeah, a handful of dirt wasn’t a lot, but have you ever tried to pick up, like, a bag of fertilizer? That stuff is heavy,_ she’d told Lena. Lena had then nodded excitedly, green eyes alight, and said, _so, logically, a mound of dirt that has molded against the body, grown with it, packed into a tight space - that would be ten times more difficult than what the movies portrayed!_

So, getting out of a grave wasn’t easy, they’d agreed.

(Alex disagreed. Lena had huffed, crossed her arms, and then laid each point down, side by side, using that sharp, tight voice she only used when she was right and she knew it. Alex refused to be in the same room as them during Friday nights, afterwards.)

They made a hypothesis: zombies were unnaturally strong, and the human race would cease to exist, because they were no match for mindless cannibalizing corpses with super strength. 

It _is_ easy, though, Kara thinks. Getting out of a crudely made grave. Too easy. 

She erupts from her makeshift grave, tearing through dirt and soil and a solid, medium sized rock, a little bigger than her fist. Torso halfway broken through, she simply sits for a second. No exertion. No panting. No burn, no sweat, no panic.

Kara doesn't think then, she scrambles to her feet.

She smells the dirt, and it’s overwhelming. In fact, she hears the forest at night, and that too is overwhelming. Everything is overwhelming, and she breathes in sharply, in shock, and finds that she can practically taste the air. Air whistles down her throat, hits her lungs, and she breathes out and it’s... odd. 

She inhales and exhales again, but she... doesn’t feel the need to do it. She holds her breath for a minute, two, before inhaling again. Her lungs didn’t burn for oxygen in those two minutes, when previously, they’d burn when she’d held her breath in for thirty seconds. 

Okay. So. She didn’t need to breathe. And, as weird as that was, she’s more concerned with something else. 

She feels different. Fundamentally different. Down to the bones in her feet. It’s... disconcerting. 

Her hypothesis is this: it either was really easy to get out of a grave, or she was unnaturally strong. 

Kara Zor El turned Danvers was, unfortunately, a weakling. All her power was in her legs, and that was simply for running. She had the upper body strength of, like, a noodle, and Alex liked very much pointing that out. 

Now, though, it seemed she was no longer a weakling. Strength coursed through her veins, singing. She felt amazing. She felt renewed, she felt invigorated, she feels like there is something raw and powerful and animalistic coursing through her veins. She feels energized, to an unbelievable degree. 

Moving is easy. She feels every movement, atoms pressing down on her retinas, pinpricks of pressure from dust, landing on her. It doesn't weigh her down, it doesn't halt it, it doesn't do anything, and she's sure that before she was buried, she wouldn't have noticed it, but now she can. It's... just new information she was aware of, but not in the way she could feel before. It's odd. New stimulation. 

Kara sets herself down gingerly, next to her... the gaping hole in the ground where she, quite frankly, escaped. It looked semi terrifying, even if there is the dull light of morning beginning to illuminate the area. This big, gaping maw of the earth, ready, eager to consume. Kara feels a muted sort of horror, but tries her best to push through it. 

She'd gotten buried alive, that's her best guess. 

Or, as Alex showed her, was buried in sand, but the forest edition. Was there a forest equivalent? She didn't think there was, but then again, she didn't know getting buried in sand was a thing either. Home in Krypton was a very different thing, with different sets of norms, and different activities. She's actually pretty sure she'd never seen a beach before Midvale. 

Her cardigan is skewed, on her, and she pulls it on more securely and that's when she notices an alarming amount of something dark and brownish red on her dress. Kara squints, pulls up the fabric of her dress, and yeah, dang, that really does look like dried blood. But Kara's worked in theater, knows what fake blood looks like. Mrs. Grant, the theater teacher, is a particularly precise person, and she tends to like her plays and props realistic.

So, she... Kara wracks her head, but she can't come up with a single image, a memory, from yesterday. So, she doesn't know what she did, who was involved, why there's Mrs. Grant's special fake blood smeared all over her, but she does know that- um. She had a good time? Kara looks down, and curses in a different faith. 

She lost her heels, somewhere, during her- her journey! They were nice! And now she doesn't know where they are! Her feet are long and dirty with mud and earth and, ugh. All for freaking nothing, too. 

She doesn't even know why she wore heels, honestly. She hates wearing them. They make it hard to move, make her taller than she already is... she does like the way Lena can’t stop staring when she does, though. Likes the way Lena gets a little huffy and pink and says that she’s _gorgeous_ and stares up at her like she’s put all the stars in the sky.

Wait, why'd she even wear heels? And her best freaking doll dress? The one that's now stained in a jarring, dried blood brown red color?

(Rao. Eliza was going to kill her. Mrs. Grant's fake blood was so hard to get out of clothes.)

Then, she remembers: Mike! A date with Mike! The cute new boy in town! That's why she wore heels! And this dress!

And then, she further remembers: 

She wore heels she didn't like to go on a date with a boy she's pretty sure she also doesn't like and in the process, blew off a girl who's she's been best friends for five literal years and had broken an upstanding tradition because she apparently had to go on a date with a boy she doesn't like and wear heels she doesn't like either- and she's going around in circles, rambling. Mentally. 

Suddenly, she wants to cry. 

She is pretty alone right now. She’s never dealt well with loneliness. Alex is long gone, and though they email and call every week, it’s really not the same. She’s surely burned the bridge between her and Lena by blowing her off for a boy she didn't even like. Physically, there’s no one else around. She paused and listened hard, and she didn’t hear anything other than the worms move underground, crickets that continued to play their music, and the soft squeak of a mouse as a cat caught it in a nearby neighborhood. Alone. She was alone. 

She would allow herself to cry. She would allow herself that. 

Kara takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. She wills the tears to come. 

They don’t. 

It is oddly painful. To want to cry, to have all the physical signs of someone who’s about to cry, the burning eyes, the lump in the throat, the odd tightness in her chest, and yet have no tears come out. She was dead dry and there was a sob rising in her throat, and fuck, her throat burned. It ached. The pain only made her want to cry more. Kara let out a heaving, uncomfortable and terribly unsatisfying dry sob. 

Rao, she can’t even cry properly. 

Kara's just... screwing up everything, huh? Everything she's ever built, in the span of a freaking night, huh? Just casually ruining her own life. _Wonderful_. 

Kara feels wave after wave of a horrified and muted sort of panic. And mortification. She's an idiot, of course she is, and she just woke up in a- honestly, it looks a bit like a grave- hole, in the ground, and she's just- just _covered_ in blood-

Fake- _fake_ blood. Kara wants to scream. How long was she in that hole? Who- oh, oh no. 

Kara shoots up and pats all her pockets, one thought racing through her head: she needs to call someone.

Maybe Mike (to tell him that while she had fun, she unfortunately wasn't interested in seeing anyone right now, _I'm sorry for leading you on Mike, thanks for being so understanding_ )

Or Eliza ( _when I get to the house, you have to promise not to get mad_ )

Or Lena (... _I'm a shitty friend and used some poor boy to get over my feelings for you? I'm sorry?_ )

Or Alex ( _you will not believe the night I just had, Alex._ )

But in the end, her desperate searches are in vain. 

She allows herself one curse word.

"Fuck everything, Rao fucking fuck!"

Okay, three. 

She glances around, barefoot and covered in flaking, dry blood, and she thinks, fuck. 

( _Damnit- fuck!- shit!- crap. Six?_ )

Her nerves melt, then jolt back up, because while yes, she does recognize the surrounding trees, she still has to get to the Danvers home, otherwise Lena and Eliza would kill her for another reason other than being a bad friend and a shitty adopted daughter (and not only for the dried blood) 

Okay. So. She does a mental checklist: shoes - Gone, definitely, so no. Dress - wrecked, so no. Cashmere cardigan stole from Alex's closet - on, attached, and only covered in a little bit of blood, she's good to go! Phone - gone, too? So, no. She didn't take a purse, thankfully. Glasses-

Crap. Kara's dirty, browned fingers grasp pitifully at air, where her glasses would have been. 

In what world-?

Kara looks around, completely bewildered. She has never been able to see with such clarity before. Not even with her glasses. Always a bit cloudy, a bit out of focus, lines not quite as sharp, colors not as vivid. 

Now, though? Kara can see. Kara can see everything, in such stunning detail it almost makes her want to cry. Rao, leaves are so beautiful. Who knew? A snail, effervescent. Kara almost couldn't wait to see Lena, see her pretty green eyes and her thick, dark lashes. And then she wants to cry for a completely different reason: those glasses were the last thing she had from her father - the frames were his, the prescription hers, but the frames were his. Where were they?

She thinks that maybe she left them in her room. Lena was the only one who explicitly told her that she liked the glasses on her, (Lena had said she looked beautiful either way, and neither of them could stop blushing for three whole minutes after.) it makes sense that she'd leave them home if she was going on a date. 

She's simultaneously relieved and unsettled. 

Relieved, because at the rate she's going, she would have lost that and she'd probably be even more screwed and bad and just, a horrible person. 

Unsettled, because... well, she doesn't know! Everything is weird, at this precise moment. The air feels weird, sweet, tastes of dirt and worms and Kara's pretty sure the Danvers' are freaking out at home. The situation is...

Messy. 

Rao, she's a mess. 

In fact, she looks like she was... murdered. If she focuses hard enough, she can see herself in her mind's eye, and, dang, she looks like a murder victim. Actually, if she were to ignore the fact that there weren't any chunks of herself missing, no bones protruding, no limbs bent oddly, she'd look like a zombie. Full circle.

She probably won't run into anyone who are just... randomly gallivanting around in the woods, but she prays to Rao that she for sure won't. 

She moves to the Danvers home quietly and briskly. It's a walk of shame, she realizes. 

She ducks her head, and trudges forward, wants to fiddle with her glasses, but remembers that they're not on her face before her fingers can reach her face. 

Oddly, her walk of shame to the Danvers home had never been so clear. 

She would have to talk to Eliza about an optometrist appointment in the near future.


	2. a full chapter of lena sleuthing around n figuring shit out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im so flattered that everyone seems so into this lil story :) I hope u like this chapter !!!! this is lenas POV

Lena awakens with an ear-piercing scream and pure, potent terror tearing through her heart.

It's too dark. Her curtains are closed, and for a second, she wonders if she's gone blind. Her hands flail at her sides, she can't see them, she can’t see _anything_ , and all she feels is cold empty space coming in from everywhere. Vulnerable, unprotected, with invisible opponents. She's never disliked her room more than she does now. 

Lena feels as though she’s burning, jarring heat against her near frozen room, and she’s reminded of when she first came into the Luthor's clutches: too small in the vastness of an unfamiliar bed that didn't carry the warmth of her mother, in the cavernous room that was now apparently hers, clinging onto a roughed up, near scalped teddy bear, Mr. Pizzly, half the size of her body and carrying only a trace of her mom's scent. Rendered blind in a blackened, ginormous room, splayed open and vulnerable. 

She had a dream. A nightmare. It had to be. And Lena is no stranger to nightmares. 

(She'd been terrified for the first few months after moving, wracked by hazy, slow moving dreams. _Nightmares_ , Lillian had dismissed. _Frivolous, silly nightmares_.)

( _Visions_ , Lena'd called them, in the same breath, before Lillian told her to quiet up, lest she wanted to be dumped in a psychiatric hospital.)

She usually had a few recurring nightmares. The one with the demon, the one with Lex, and the one with her drowning. 

The one with the demon had three three common elements: dark, murky water, a pale, naked body that turned blue and bloated. The demon stands at the edge of the water, eyes dark. Unmoving. Malicious. 

Lex is always bigger in her nightmares. He stands over her unnaturally and laughs, athough it’s more of a whispery crackle than a sound that holds full joy. His bald head is shining with sweat and there’s this glazed look in his eyes. She dreams she’s one of the victims he mowed down when he was twenty four, and he laughs while he points his gun. 

Lena debates with herself for a minute, before deciding that her drowning nightmare is the worst. When she was younger, she saw the youngest version of herself gazing down at the water, blank eyed, as the older version of her flailed in the water, reaching out, imploring, desperate. She is never saved, and she wakes up crying when her lungs finally and painfully fill with water. Younger her is replaced by people sometimes; with Lionel, Lex. Lillian. Even Kara. Always staring down at her and remaining so still Lena wonders if they can even see her, drowning. 

(When she first had nightmares, Lillian would glower at her from across the breakfast table, and say some snarling, passive aggressive thing about noise and how well it carried in the mansion. One night, Lillian had barged in and yanked the teddy bear away, and Lena had cried harder still, colder than she'd ever been before. No one came back for her and she never saw her stuffed animal again.

Lillian soundproofed her rooms a few months later. Lena still isn’t sure if it’s because she was too loud, or if Lillian was up to something that she didn’t want others to hear.)

Lena staggers upward in her bed, head cloudy, and nearly falls out of bed in her urgency to reach her phone. The tile underneath her feet is frigid. Lena imagines, for a split second, that the cold is tangible, that the unyielding hardness, crawls up into her through her heels, numbing to the point of brittleness. Sometimes, it’s comforting to be cold, where she can’t feel warm and she accepts it, not even in her chest, her stomach. Sometimes, she’s so cold it hurts, that _heat_ hurts, and she feels as though she’s inches away from shattering. 

It's too dark and the brightness of her phone makes her both wince and overtly aware of the tears blurring her eyes, her vision. Her phone is just white light, blaring out from her trembling hands. The sob rises up in her throat like bile, and she stifles it before she realizes what she’s doing, blinking her tears away. 

Her phone tells her it's Saturday, 4:32am. She tries not to think of her- her nightmare, but can feel the subtle tremble in her fingers as she opens her phone and dials Kara's numbers. 

Kara's photo attached to her number in her phone is of last Halloween. Kara and her had been in onesies, she was dressed in this horrendous, terribly made Supergirl onesie, and Lena was in an equally horrible, shoddily made dinosaur one. They'd actually gone around Midvale like that, looking like fools, but she likes being a fool with Kara. Kara, who is safe and non-judgemental and handles the most jagged parts of her like she’s got indestructible fingers, and the rawest parts of her with a soft voice and warm, understanding eyes. 

Kara's cheery, warm voice through the phone is electronic and quiet, but kind, as always, and Lena chokes back a sob as Kara tells the caller to _please call me back at a later date, sorry for missing your call!_

Lena's voice is too wobbly, her throat too raw, and it is far too early for her to pull off run of the mill, friendly worry, but that doesn't stop Lena from trying her best to sound... sane and concerned but not _concerning_. "I- um, hi, Kara. I know it's. Well, now it's 4:37, so I know it's early, but I was wondering if... you were okay? I know I seemed upset earlier when you- earlier when it came to my attention that we wouldn't hang out this- well, yesterday, I guess, now. But, I haven't heard from you in a while, and I was... worried. Sorry, I'm sounding redundant. I'll just- let you go, um. Love you, hope you're doing okay, and call me back, please."

She hurriedly pressed her thumb into the bright red circle that means hang up, and flings her phone on her bed. She distantly hears it skid off the bed helplessly, hears it crash onto the tile below.

Lena doesn't care.

All she can think about is the last time she saw Kara. Friday. Kara telling her that she wasn’t going to see her at night, because she’s going on a date, actually. Lena had gone numb. Kara’s set jaw, the determined look in her eyes, the bracing of her shoulders. Lena had gone numb, and when that thawed, all she could feel was her entire body throbbing, like it was screaming. She’d gotten mad, and said words that sounded mean, but she can’t remember them over the heat of her ears, the burning in her chest. 

That would be the last interaction between them if Lena… if _it_ was right. 

She walks as quietly as she can, feet so cold and numb they've started to ache in a way that makes her imagine that they’re frozen solid, blue, and ready to shatter, until she's outside. 

The Luthor manor sits at the edge of the woods that surrounds Midvale, engulfs it. It looks forbidding, Lena supposes. It’s like the trees near the Luthor manor understand the darkness in the house, and have done their best to mimic it. The bark is dark and rough, the lightest touch results in scrapes and blood. The leaves are a dark color, and spider webs intertwine the thin, near emaciated branches of the bushes that litter the forest, look like they’re the only thing holding them together sometimes. 

She’d been drawn to them, ever since she was young, but she never understood the appeal of exploring, of diving deep into underbrush and walking over crunching leaves and surrounding herself with mosquitos and centipedes. Then, Kara Danvers came to Midvale, into Lena's life, age thirteen, nearly unable to speak a lick of English, except for Alex, Eliza, Jeremiah and car crash. Lena had been ten, almost eleven, when Kara came into her life and threw her dull world into technicolor.

Her teachers had suggested Lena as a peer tutor (Lena was a prodigy in damn near everything, and the Luthors liked to show off their charity case, so they agreed.) 

Despite not really knowing the language, Kara caught on fairly quickly. Lena found Kara standoffish and distant and grief hung over her, so potent Lena could practically _taste_ it. Thirteen year old Kara was unerringly _interesting_. Kara gave little tidbits of her life in Russia, of her parents, and Lena ate them up as eagerly as she ate up Lex’s college textbooks. She was unfamiliar with most American things but seemingly eager to explore, to learn, and, Lena thinks, eager to distract herself from the tragedy that brought her here. 

When she asked Lena if they could go exploring, Lena agreed. It was one of the first demands she'd made since coming to Midvale. It’s one of the first times she’s not had this entire veil of sadness clouding up her eyes. Her accent came out far more when she was excited and she _was_ , pointing out various birds and bugs. Lena never stood a chance, really. 

Now Lena knows those woods like the back of her mind, every tree and every leaf, in a way Kara didn't. The woods, the forest, even the trees behind the Luthor manor welcome here, and the way they tremble in the wind makes something inside Lena shift, molten and warm. The forest floor welcomes her footsteps, and every time she returns, it’s like the trees try to hug her in their wooden arms. She should thank Kara for introducing them, she thinks.

_If Kara's still alive._

Lena moves quicker. 

The outside wind is warm. The ground, too, is warm. Even nature is kinder than the Luthors, she thinks absentmindedly. 

She has a spot, has several, that she likes to go to, when she's had a shitty day, or night, or had nightmares. This was a nightmare. It _must_ be a nightmare. Never a dream - why in the world would she dream about Kara's throat being savagely ripped out by Mike whatever the fuck his last name was? 

One of her spots is the backseat of Lex's old car. She slides the key out from just under the left tire, and slides into the car. It's a fancy car, with tinted windows, short, slender wheels; a sports car, sleek and pretty. The cool, stagnant air that comes from being inside something small is soothing.

She's always liked small spaces, felt safe in them, protected, a barrier pressed up against her, the only way to attack visible and foreseen. Small spaces contain her, make her feel like she won't come apart, even if she wanted to.

The opposite of Kara.

She curls around herself in the backseat and allows herself a few soundless tears. 

Her hands shake where they’re curled, against her chest, pressed in so tight that Lena can feel her fingernails pressing into her palms. When she can’t focus, when she can’t think, it helps having things to play with. She likes squishy things, mostly, when she was younger, and then Lex introduced her to nails and metal and wires and Lillian gladly threw away clay and play-doh. 

Lena wishes she hadn't just left her phone. To have _something_ to fiddle with. Maybe she could call again, beg Kara to answer her, beg her to be alive. 

She's sure Kara is dead, though. There's a sucking sensation in her chest, like a whirlpool where her heart is, aching deep in the middle of it. She doesn't know how she knows, just that there's a deadening finality to it, an ominous certainty, a doom.

Her logical mind, the majority of her mind, argues against it. It's simply not possible, and even though there have been unexplained things, phenomenons that have happened to her before, history has proven that individuals who claimed clairvoyance, special abilities, or anything like that, were usually suffering from poor mental health. Or they were burnt to a crisp in the Salem Witch Trials. But those usually targeted people of color, women specifically, for ridiculous reasons, in lose or lose tests. 

Maybe she's losing her mind, like Lex. Would she try to shoot up a school, like Lex, or would she be some other new, horrific beast? She could then argue that madness is more nurture than nature. She doesn't share genetic material with the Luthors, after all. Lillian never let her forget she was the Luthor’s charity case. 

Her breath skips in her throat, stuttering, and her hands numb and then melt into a static, fizzy drink-like feeling. Her mind feels like it’s racing, skidding over itself, turning to putty with every jagged, half coherent thought. 

Mike whatever the fuck his last name was, in all of his tall, pasty white and boring mediocrity, has managed to ensnare Kara Danvers, and then he brutally murdered her and Lena had seen it. He'd smiled like he was in on some secret, and then he lunged, and Kara had flailed, screamed, pleaded, bled, and then was promptly buried. Only, she wasn't sure it'd all hold up in court - _the witness saw the murder go down in a what? A dream?_

Fuck, she's losing her mind.

The car gets too warm, and she has an irrational fear - _what if I've breathed in all the oxygen and all I'm breathing is carbon dioxide, and I'm asphyxiating?_ \- and she wonders if this odd, uncomfortable aching in her stomach, an odder bubbling feeling in her chest, is what Kara feels, is what Kara felt, when she was buried. Lena knew Kara's heart was still beating, when she was being buried, when she was being hidden away like some dirty secret, a mistake, like Mike didn't want anyone to see his handy work, the fucking serial killer psychopath.

Fuck.

The car is too hot, and the windows are foggy and Lena is hyperventilating, and, fuck, fuck, is this how she dies? Lack of oxygen? Is that how Kara died? The gaping fatal wound to her throat, of course, is the reason she died, but she died with dirt in her lungs. Lena just _knows_. She suffered. 

The car door creaks when she practically throws herself at it, desperately yanking, fingers scrabbling along cool and heated spots on the leather, trying desperately to find the latch. It’s cool, metal, and when she yanks at it, and opens the door, she almost cries, spilling herself onto the asphalt, trembling, gasping, and then... still. The ground is cool on her overheated body, yet still oddly warm, like there was machinery humming below the surface. Her chest hurts, feels too big yet too small, face too heated, and oxygen doesn't feel right in her lungs. 

She's not fit for public consumption, right now. She's pale and dirty and sweaty and probably visibly tremulous and she's not wearing pants but rather shorts, so short they could pass for underwear. She's wearing Kara's sweater, a gift from Alex who is a student at National City University, studying to be a doctor, and Kara had generously lent it to her, and Lena just never gave it back. She's a terrible person. First she steals Kara's sweater, and then she dreams of her death? What kind of a sick person does that?

She’s not even wearing fucking _shoes_. Christ. She’s all the adjectives that mean bad and sloppy and terrible and evil. She’s out here, laying in the ground, ruining Kara’s Alex sweater and like, she isn’t even wearing fucking shoes. 

Lena's shaking. She squeezes her eyes shut, and fists the soft material in her hand. It's soft and it faintly smells of Kara, and Lena lets go, doesn't want to stretch the fabric, ruin yet another good thing in her life, and knots her fingers together, tapping rapidly on her knuckles. She's still shaking. She's- she needs to control herself. This- _god_ , she feels so fucking bad, like she’s gonna die-

Panic attacks. This is a panic attack. She’s had a few of them before, but they were small and easy compared to this. Besides that, she's helped Kara with panic attacks, knows what to do-

Lena finds herself staring, unblinking in the lightening night sky. She squeezes her eyes shut again, and tries to slow the sharp, wheezing gasps, focusing on the way the ground is cool, but not freezing, the way the breeze dances on her face, the way it carries strands of hair and the way it tickles, just a bit. 

Her breathing quiets, no longer loud and raspy, but still rapid. Her throat is dry. She can smell rain, on the wind, damp, warm, rich and earthy: petrichor. She can smell Kara, faint hints, dragged away with the night breeze. She has this particular smell - a comforting sweet muskiness innate to Kara, a hint of citrus from the body wash she uses and the still air in the school art room that smells like clay and paint. 

The world stops spinning behind her eyelids, and even though her breathing hitches every now and then, it is otherwise smoothly entering and exiting her lungs. 

Lena wakes at 4:32, after having dreamed that Kara Danvers died at around 4:28 am. 

It was a dream. A horrific, terrible dream, a nightmare, and if Lena believed in Hell, she'd probably go there when she died. The feeling like her chest has collapsed within itself in a concave doesn't leave, and she's sure it won't leave until she sees Kara alive, okay, breathing. 

Something snaps into place and Lena doesn’t think. She uses the car the hoist herself up, and then she walks in the direction of the Danvers' house. It's on the other side of the town, it'll take about an hour on foot, but Lena has a lot of willpower and determination. Persistence. She always has. 

She's at the edge of the Luthor estate when she hears the confused yelp of her name, spoken by a staff member, a gardener. It's not even her name, just one that trained her to stand still, to heel, like a dog: "Miss Luthor!" 

Lena slowly turns around, and _fuck_. She knows how ridiculous she must look. The look of muted horror on - Lena squints her eyes, focusing on the name tag - Emily's face makes Lena realize that she must think that Lena is running away. All the staff know the inner workings of the Luthor household, knows the dynamic between the remaining two Luthors, and Lena knows how determined and desperate she must look (the bare, dirty feet gives her an unhinged energy, Lena is sure) it's no wonder. 

"Miss Luthor, what are you doing out at this time?" It's said nearly scandalized, but there's the tiniest bit of softness in her eyes, something that sounds like pity, or perhaps understanding. Lena almost wants to ask what the time is, but she's sure it'd only make her look more unstable, more unreliable. 

Lena swallows, and then forces herself to melt into a softer position, less nerves, less shaking. Hopefully, the picture of sheepish docility. "I am going out for a morning run, I've decided to pursue a healthier lifestyle." The lie is seamless, smooth, cool. It’s metallic on her tongue, coppery. She then forces her mouth into the smallest, faintest frown, a slight furrow to her brow - a learned look that screams entitlement, arrogance, a look that says, _why are you speaking to me and don't answer that, it was rhetorical, God._

Emily the gardener shrinks.

Crap. Guilt is hot and sticky, makes her stomach squirm, and she softens immediately. Emily - R. she distantly remembers - is a thirty year old woman who has a three year old daughter, and she came into the staff about a year ago, and had started to grow lavender below Lena's window at her request. She was kind, and Lena was being a dick.

She sighs. "Terribly sorry, Emily. I woke up early for a run, and it seems as though I'm a bit irritable. I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

She didn't even have to think - she just opens her mouth and plausible words come out. She’s just- not wearing shoes. She can do this. She prays Emily doesn’t look down. 

Emily still looks slightly shaken, but she smiles apologetically nonetheless. "I'm sorry, Miss Luthor, Mrs. Luthor hasn't notified us that you wanted to run, and so-"

"I haven't told Lillian yet." Lena blurts out, panicked. _Lillian cannot know about this,_ she chants in her head, stomach curling, _Lillian cannot know._ "I wanted to surprise her." she transitions smoothly enough, trying to relax her tense face. "She's made some comments about how I need to slim down, you know, and I thought I'd do this and surprise her." Half truths. What blessings. 

Emily's eyes squint with sympathy, and Lena tries to stop the tensing of her body, the immediate urge to be defensive and sharp and ugly. She had gotten pity a lot, as a child, received loads of it now, and she'd always hated the sickly sweet way people crooned, _oh, poor Lena, the victim._ It always made her want to bear her teeth. She wasn't someone to be pitied, the hardened, jagged parts of her howls. She was someone to be understood, respected. Maybe feared. 

Lena forces herself to smile, something with more hostility than self deprecation or _aw shucks_ like what her words inspired, but Emily doesn't seem to change her position. Lena's stomach starts to sink. 

Emily shifts her head, and smiles like she's embarrassed. "Sorry, Miss Luthor, Mrs. Luthor asked us to notify her if you ever left the estate before 7 am, or came home after 8 pm. If it counts for anything, your figure is lovely."

Lena resists the near overwhelming urge to gnash her teeth together like a rat. She smiles limply and nods, "Thank you very much, Emily, I completely understand. There will not be any need to notify Lillian - I'll head right back in."

Emily nods, concern, pity, and other nauseating things swim in her warm eyes, and Lena practically flees the scene. She has no choice but to wait, leave at 7:30 just to be safe, and make it back before 8 pm. 

The cold air of the Luthor mansion hits her square in the face when she opens the door, and the colder, marble floor is nearly startling under her feet, but she's grown used living in a house that isn't hers, gotten used to the coldness, to the numbness. Her bare feet make slight slapping noises on the tile. When she was younger, she liked to slap her feet extra loud against the tile, the sound and sensation amusing, a simple joy of hers, she felt like a duck. She doesn’t now, of course, she makes sure that her steps hold no sound. (Lionel has told her to stop once, when she was younger. And, shaken, the overwhelming feeling like the one adult who was safe, who was on her side and then suddenly not, of betrayal, just from a _simple scolding_ , she did.)

Lena doesn't mean to reminisce about the past. Her mind is quicker than she is, and they come up, unbidden. She's learning that imagining them as tangible things that fit in neat little boxes and tucking those boxes away works wonders. Who liked being weighed down by memories? They left her dazed, with a distracting ache in her chest. No, it was better to pack them away. 

Her room is cold. Lena feels cold. Everything is so _fucking_ cold. She does not shake, and she does not shiver, though. She simply searches for her phone.

She finds it whole and good on the floor, next to her bed. It reads Saturday, 5:20 am. Lena grabs a blanket, a pillow, and drags it all to her closet. There, she sets up the best makeshift bed she can, and curls in it. Sliding the door panels on her closet closed blankets her in a small, near cozy darkness.

She had multiple spots. This was the most dangerous one. But Lillian didn't randomly check up on her anymore, hasn't done that since she was twelve, and it was likely that she wouldn't today. 

She doesn't even really know why she has a particulate affinity for small spaces. She had hazy memories of a cottage, and the nooks and crannies she would squeeze and flit into, remembers long games of hide and seek where Lena always won and the 'forts' she would build with her mother but were really just two sleeping bags in the closet. 

Lena blinks up into the darkness, and she waits. She can wait. She's a patient girl. 

By the time it is seven, Lena's stomach hurts, aches with hunger, but she dared not move a muscle. Going downstairs for food meant being inevitably forced into joining Lillian for breakfast, something that was required until Lionel died from testicular cancer, and Lex tried to murder fourth graders with an AK-47. With Lionel, it was for a few weeks before Non-Optional Breakfast was resumed. Lex was different, of course. Lillian wasn't willing to play the role of cheerful, domestic matriarch who had breakfast with Lena _at all_ , not after her precious baby boy was sent to rot in a maximum security prison for thirty two consecutive life sentences. 

By 7:15, Lena wonders if maybe Emily told Lillian of her 'plans,' if Lillian were to come here and ask about them. Each act of disobedience would earn her some punishment, she's positive. One - closet. Two - trying to leave. Three - trying to leave _without permission_. She learned very early that it wasn't in her best interest to disobey Lillian. She had some bizarre and some outright but always cruel punishments. She once made Lena clean the first floor of the Luthor mansion with a toothbrush after she threw up on it accidentally. Lena was thirteen and her arms ached for days. She'd refused to eat fast food, regardless if it was her birthday, since then. 

What can Lena say? She's a quick study. 

She curls into herself, makes herself small, and tries to control her breathing. She hopes it isn't as loud as she thinks. She must be patient, must be cautious, must be ruthless and sly and cunning. Lena can do that. 

By 7:30, the house is deathly silent. 

Lena waits an extra five minutes, just to be sure. 

Lena crawls out of the closet by 7:37 (the two minutes, just to be sure) and by 7:52, she's ready to go. She'd rushed, a bit. Her ponytail was a bit sloppy, and she hadn't bothered to change out of her sweater, but now she's wearing leggings and running shoes. She brings a water bottle, a ruse, an important piece of her disguise, and when she passes Emily in the front gardens, she forces herself to smile and wave. Emily smiles and waves back. 

The trek takes an hour, but Lena doesn't mind. She likes mindless activities, that's why she likes to swim, why she likes to hike. All that is needed are smooth movements, and most of the time, she doesn't realize she's done actual exercise until the day after and her muscles are sore. The weightlessness from swimming and vividness and seclusion of the woods are more than enough to distract her. Maybe she should try running. Lillian had mentioned something about hips and how _no one wants someone with mammoth hips, Lena._

The crows that flock this town in murders all seem perched on the trees she walks under. They watch, heads cocked, eyes dark and small as beads, as she speeds under them. A thousand tiny eyes. She doesn't mind crows, really. Lex would say that they weren't birds, that they were drones, sent from the government to watch them. Lena should have known something was up with him, even before he went and did something stereotypical for a white man in today's day and age. 

They stare down at her, and she feels almost protected by them. 

The Danvers' home is small, in comparison to the Luthor mansion, but it's a mansion - everything is small in comparison to it. It looks small on the outside, but Lena knows it's lush and cozily decorated on the inside, warm. 

The windows are dark, and Lena imagines that Jeremiah and Eliza are gone, both having gone to work - Jeremiah to some government cubicle that he liked to grouse about and Eliza to the hospital, an hour away from Midvale. Alex is gone too, having left for college in National City when they were sophomores. 

Kara should be inside, fast asleep. Preferably with a broken phone, or a lost one, because she tended to either break or lose items rather easily and that would explain why she’s been absent. 

She knocks on the front door, ringing hollow in heavy, thick oak. After an ominous silence, she knocks again. And rings the doorbell, for clarity's sake. Again, no response. Lena knocks again, knuckles burning, harder, and then finally hisses, " _Kara_!" 

If Kara is here and awakens, and finds Lena outside like this, Lena wouldn't know what to say. _I had a bad dream? I was wondering if you were okay, because you blew me off for a boy who gave me a seriously bad feeling and he looks like a fucking school shooter, believe me, I know what a school shooter looks like, I lived with one for a few years-_

Still, Lena doesn't care. She backs away from the front door, and sneaks around the back, where Kara's window is, high above the ground, on the second story. Fuck, Kara wasn't making this easy for her, huh? 

Lena grabs a handful of twigs and dirt and pebbles, and throws them up and at the window. She immediately regrets it. Gravity is cruel and dirt is lightweight and a few of the pebbles hit the window, she can hear them click against glass, but the twigs and the dirt just immediately come flying back at her. Lena spits out a twig and she wants to scream. 

"Kara!" She hisses instead, up at the window. "Please! C'mon!" She takes another handful of dirt, singles out the pebbles and discards the rest, and then throws them again. 

They clink against the glass of Kara's window, and fall back to earth with several small thumps. Lena exhales loudly through her nose. 

There's a last option, several that belong to one category, that Alex taught her, but she doesn't want to use it. Who wants to break into their best friend's home? 

Lena stands still, hands on her hips, and tries to clear her head of frustration and desperation, enough to think. Okay, so Alex had pointed out that there were many ways of breaking and entering.

 _Through windows_ , big rock. Definitely not.

 _Through the front door_ , pick the lock - Lena needed to know how to pick the lock. God, no _wonder_ Lillian regarded her as a failure, she didn't even know _how to pick a lock._

That idea was out. _Through the garage_ \- have to enter the house through the garage. A definite no. The Danvers’ garage was scary.

 _Back door,_ use key - where did Alex say the key was? Maybe.

 _Up the tree across Kara's window, and... jump?_ No. 

Lena scrambles to the back of the house and searches for the key. She wasn't suicidal and she didn't want to be arrested. 

She finds it under the rock closest to the door, but even without that, it's the only option, the rock is too round and shiny to be real. She'll need to tell the Danvers' about this, maybe give them a new rock that looks real, but for now, she just wants to know if Kara is okay. 

Walking into a vacant house is odd. There's the oddest flit of sensations, one that's like danger lights flashing in her eyes, blaring out, _you shouldn't be here, you shouldn't be here!_ and a bit like she's walking into the Luthor mansion. With everything shrouded in shadows and cooled and dimmed, it's hard to recognize it as the place where she had her first sleepover, her first kiss, where her best friend resided.

There's a creak upstairs, and instead of feeling relief, Lena's stomach tightens with fear. The hairs at the nape of her neck stands up, and the feeling of danger, the lights and the signs flashing, screaming, _you shouldn't be here,_ only intensifies. 

There's a low, muffled snarl, and Lena's heart thrums in her throat, and she glances up, where the noise came from. Curiosity and fear collide. Is she going to be that stupid, cliche white girl who gets murdered first in a horror movie? 

A thump resonates throughout the entire house, and her breath hitches in her chest. There’s a thin, high pitched scratch, then, a beat after the thump, like someone ran their fingernail down a chalkboard. Lena's skin crawls. 

Kara. 

Those noises _aren't_ Kara, Lena knows, in her heart of hearts. Those noises aren't _human_. Those noises belong to something, something dangerous, a monster, a fucking werewolf for all she cares, and they could belong to something that may possibly hurt her best friend, if her best friend is upstairs and not in the dirt somewhere in the woods behind this very house. Fear wins, but not in the way it'd want to. 

Is she going to be that stupid white girl who gets murdered first in a horror movie? Yes. Maybe. 

Lena darts upstairs, and hopes if she comes in contact with a monster or- or Mike- that her death be quick. A snapped neck, blunt force trauma, whatever. She feels she's suffered enough in her life to deserve a painless death. 

When she bursts into Kara's room, it's empty. Lena's heart doesn't slow. 

Kara's room is muted blues and browns, washed aglow with golden light from a nightlight, because Kara (nor Lena) ever shook that childish fear. Dull morning light seeps through the curtains of Kara's sole window, and bathes the room with a melancholic sort of feeling. It would be comforting if it weren't for that snaking feeling of unease, rippling through her. Anxiety curls around her stomach, a familiar fiend, threatening whatever water she drank when she was power walking here. 

The bed is made, clean, cold when Lena presses her hand into it, the covers cool and unruffled. No indication of being slept in or even touched. Her school bag is there, discarded carelessly, and so is the shirt she wore to school yesterday. Lena glances at Kara's closet - the doors are open, and it looked ruffled through. Lena can see it - Kara comes home, gets ready for her date, then leaves or is picked up.

Something, a half formed idea, pops into Lena's head, and she slowly takes her phone out. Saturday, 9:21am, and her thumb trembles just as it did this morning.

And just like this morning, Kara doesn't pick up.

It's not what Lena was looking for, but there wasn't any ringing either. Her phone is gone, she didn't leave it home. So. 

Kara didn't come home last night. She didn't make it back. 

The realization feels like a blow. It's dizzying. The world is still, quiet, and Lena doesn't move. Nothing moves. The only thing that does move is the curtains, swayed by a morning breeze allowed by Kara's open window. 

Wait. 

Lena slowly creeps closer. Curiosity bubbles back in. She's sure she heard the pebbles she threw hit the glass with audible _tink tink tinks_ , sure she heard them hit the ground after they bounced off. Kara's window wasn't open when Lena threw the pebbles. Which meant someone had been in the house before Lena, had been in Kara's room- which meant that-

( _fucking fear_ )

She wasn't alone. 

Her heart skips, thuds, and then halts completely when she hears a creak, like the floorboards were hissing, _run_ , _run_ , behind her. 

Then-

"Lena?" 

Jeremiah Danvers stands unsteadily at the doorway, eyes glossy and hair unkempt. His nose is red and his voice sounds like he hasn't breathed out of his nose in years. 

When he sniffles, Lena puts all the pieces together: she's losing her mind, Jeremiah was here the whole time and not at his job because he's sick, and she got scared for nothing. Her heart goes _thud thud thud,_ so heavily that if this were a novel, the onomatopoeia would be in italics _and_ bold. 

"Lena," He repeats, no longer a question, rubbing his ginormous hand over his face. He smiles tiredly, and the guilt that suddenly hits curls around her ribs like a cat. As familiar a fiend as anxiety. "Hey, sweetie, you okay?"

He doesn't ask, _how'd you get in here?_ Not even _what are you doing here?_ No, he calls her _sweetie_ , and asks her if she's okay. Lena shifts away from him in discomfort, skin crawling. She hates being alone with Jeremiah Danvers, hates interacting with him.

The kind face framed by a rag of dark thick hair, paired with his warm brown eyes. It makes something inside Lena want to throw up, honestly. Jeremiah Danvers radiates kindness and he’s unnervingly nice. He acts like such a dad, a good one, the perfect one, actually, and Lena always feels incredibly displaced by him; it feels like it's an attack on Lionel, which is rude, because he isn't exactly alive to defend himself. She wonders what Lionel would say anyways, in his defense, for being so cold and distant and neglectful. _I was busy running a company! I gave you_ some _love, didn't I?_

"I'm wonderful, Mr. Danvers." Her response comes out stilted, careful, each word pronounced carefully and thus flawlessly, the way the Luthor's speech therapist taught her. (Lillian had been adamant she sounded like an American, her natural Irish lilt washed away. Not completely, though. R's sometimes snag.) She blinks up at the large man. "And yourself?" 

Jeremiah huffs out a little laugh at her formality. "I'm doing good, kid. Little under the weather, though." Lena nods along like she cares. She does, just not as much as she wants to ask him where Kara is, if he knows, and opens her mouth to do just that when Jeremiah yawns loudly and then asks, "How is Kara? Did she sleep well?"

And, _oh_. Lena blinks, her mind going blank. "What?"

"She has trouble sleeping sometimes, Lena. You know that." She does. She nods her agreement. Jeremiah continues, shifting his weight and then turning away from her. "I was wondering if she had any nightmares last night." Jeremiah motions for her to follow him, and they glide down the stairs, heading towards the kitchen.

There's a pause, as they're moving, that gives Lena a chance to gather up the evidence, and plan what to say. Kara - or someone - said that Kara was going to hers, and the Danvers' seem to be under the impression that she spent the night. Lena's heart thrums hard against her ribs, and she answers quickly enough so that the pause doesn't seem suspicious, "She's great. No nightmares, actually. We, um, we had a good time." 

Jeremiah does his odd huff laugh, "I don't doubt she had a good time." He turns his head a bit to smile at her. "She loves you a lot, you know? I've never seen her happier than when she's with you."

"Oh, um." Lena blushes, feels the heat rising from her cheeks. She feels a bit like preening. She likes that Kara's love of her is public for others to see and notice, and she likes that she makes Kara happy. Mostly though, she feels a little lost. A lot panicked. "I feel the exact same way, Mr. Danvers. She's my best friend." 

"Of course." Jeremiah smiles like he knows a secret, and Lena blushes hotter. He bustles around the kitchen, and she can see he pulls out a handful of tea bags and honey and lemon. "What do you want, sweetie? Tea? Some coffee? Maybe some orange juice, some oh-jay?" 

Lena quickly shakes her head, smiling politely. She needs to leave. "Oh, no, thank you, Mr. Danvers, I should get back, Kara's still, um. She's still asleep, and I came over here to-" to _what_? Fuck- "um, hide a present for her."

Jeremiah tilts his head. His dark eyes gleam. "Oh? What is it?"

"A, um, a card." Another reason Lena dislikes being in Jeremiah's presence? Her lying ability becomes nonexistent. Panic bubbles at the back of her throat.

Still, Jeremiah nods, like he believes her. "I see." A pause. Panic remains a simmer, but there is no overflowing. Jeremiah puts a mug of water in the microwave. Lena fidgets just at the end of the kitchen island, staring at him. Waiting. A minute goes by. Two. The hum of the microwave accompanies them in the quiet. Lena’s almost curious: does the silence not bother him at all? Lena feels close to death, because of all the awkwardness. Christ. 

Jeremiah then suddenly erupts into a fit of coughs, shoulders hunching upwards. Lena jerks forward and awkwardly pats his broad back. His coughing fit calms after a second of straight hacking his lungs out, and he pulls his arm away from his face, smiling warmly at her. "Thanks, kid. Appreciate the assist."

Lena feels like a marionette puppet with its strings cut loose. "You-you're welcome, Mr. Danvers."

"You can call me Jeremiah, Lena." Lena wants to shake her head, wants to tell him, _thanks, but I literally cannot_ , when Jeremiah smiles, and nods towards the front door. "You can head out now. I don't think Kara'll like waking up alone." 

Kara doesn't. She whines and pouts, says she was lonely like she doesn't know what it does to Lena's heart, until Lena bends and says sorry, says _I'll be there in a sec_ . It's purely platonic, of course, (of _course_ ) but the way Jeremiah's grinning makes her think that it isn't. Platonic, that is. Lena blushes a bright, blood red and splutters. "I- we- Mr. Dan- Jere- _Mr. Danvers,_ we're not, um, we don't sleep together-"

(They do. _Platonically_.)

Jeremiah cackles, loud and croaky, and Lena jerks upright, nearly stumbling out of the kitchen in her haste. It takes everything she has to walk calmly to the front door instead of running.

"I'm- goodbye, Mr. Danvers. I hope you feel better soon!" She calls out loudly, closing the Danvers' front door gently. She can still hear Jeremiah's booming laughter. She doesn't think she'll ever not hear it. From there, she flees.

She practically runs to the Luthor manor, stewing in pure mortification. Christ, Jeremiah thought she and Kara- she groans loudly. The crows above her caw loudly, their dark beady eyes gleeful. 

She glares up at them, half a second away from flipping them off, when a car drives by. A little kid, face pressed against the window, stares at her blankly. Lena smiles tightly at him. His expression doesn't change, even if his eyes follow her as the car speeds by. 

She's in public. Best not to flip off bird, lest the public think the remaining Luthor heir is as batshit as the former. 

Once inside the gates of the Luthor mansion, the temperature drops. A wind picks up. Lena frowns, and then hurries inside. Inside is worse. The manor is too big to ever smell like anything, or be stale, but there is a dark edge to the still air inside. Lena inhales shakily, and starts to head for the stairs. Each step is like ice against her bare legs. 

Once inside her room, exhaustion settles deep in her bones. Defeat, confusion, fear are all so heavy. Pulls at her skin, drags her to ground. She scrambles around her room, anxiety and exhaustion warring inside her. Her head feels muddled. The friendliness and nonchalance that Jeremiah exuded, the stiffness of the Luthor manor, the crows, the fear her nightmare inspired and the severe unease that came with Kara’s apparent disappearance all curate their individual emotion, separate from each other, and once now, inside her room, it seems they decide to mix. Nausea. 

Lena's fingers visibly tremble when she heads over to her desk, and pulls out her journal. It's small, black, with thick white paper. She grabs her favorite black pen, and opens to a clean page.

 _What Happened to Kara_ ** _,_** she titles it. She writes quickly, her lettering messy _, Went on date with Mike something - find his last name - on Friday and never returned home. Saturday today._

_Nightmare early sat morning where Kara was murdered by Mike, and then buried somewhere in the woods behind the Danvers' home._

_Went to find her there, couldn't, and all her personal items were missing. No phone, no glasses, no purse. She never returned. Something weird happened (?) unsure if anyone was actually there or if JD opened the window. Should have asked. Was too flustered. JD was told by Kara (?) that she was going here._

Lena almost writes - because if Kara is gone, and Jeremiah Danvers, and by extension, Eliza, believes that Kara disappeared under Lena's watch, who is a Luthor, a family whose reputation is in tatters and is strongly suspected of sociopathy as a whole, Lena's, essentially, fucked - _might be implicated in Kara's disappearance, majority of evidence, even if false, points to me,_ when she snaps back into herself.

She burns with a dark shame, pen still in stiff, cold fingers, feeling her cheeks flush. Of course, she took herself there. Lena hates her upbringing for making her so calculated, so sly and self interested. So prone to see every angle, and the way it affects her. Kara is (maybe) dead, and Lena is thinking of how it could be traced back to her. There's something so sinister about that - she imagines this is how a psychopath thinks, a serial killer. A Lex Luthor. 

No, Lena tells herself. It's _smart_. It's smart, she's being smart. She does have an alibi - the staff can contest to that. She's got her own back. Now back to Kara. 

She writes slowly, _unsure of anything else_ , and after staring at her near cursive letters for a beat, Lena drops her pen with a sigh. She has very little evidence, very little anything. The stuff she does have is inaccurate, imprecise, and slash or self incriminating. Useless. Lena's fucking useless. 

She closes her eyes, and Kara, unabidden, comes to mind. The delicate smattering of light brown freckles, the same color as the darkest strand of her blond, golden hair. Her pink lips, the bottom fuller, and the top split with her pronounced cupid's bow. She always looked - looks - happy, like her mouth is always pulled up into the smallest of smiles. A permanent curl at the edge of her lips. There was always a thickness to her voice, like it was simmering in honey and it came out slow and sweet. 

Lena's chest aches with finality. 

Because, and it sounds stupid, but Lena's always felt... a connection, a line, invisible but strong as steel, flexible as rope, connecting her to Kara. 

Since they met, they were _KaraandLena_. _LenaandKara_. Inseparable. Best friends. Attached at the hip. Along with the rest of the phrases that describe Lena and Kara's almost codependent existence together. Well. On Lena's end, she's sure it _is_ codependency. Lena doesn't know _how_ to exist without Kara, how to function. Feels like without Kara, there is no Lena. Quantum Entanglement. She cannot be described independently. _Refuses_ to. Lena feels like she exists as a heart, to Kara. Every beat is hers, for her.

(And Lena doesn't like thinking about this, honestly. It highlights her needy inner child, the one she's sure will never grow, will never heal. She's all too conscious of her open wounds, her deficits. _But_ . But, it _hurts_ to think that Kara isn't as attached as she is. It _aches_ , like someone reached inside her chest, took her heart in their hand and _squeezed_ , to even consider that her need to be with Kara in any capacity is one-sided. That Kara doesn't care for her the way she does for Kara.)

And now, this connection is simply... _gone_. It's like there was a designated space inside of her, she imagines it nestled against her heart, the back of her brain, laced in every tendon, where this connection to Kara resided. And, since this morning, it's gone. She felt it's absence with every step, every inhale. There's something ragged and missing, Lena feels, inside of her. Fundamental. Kara. 

And half of her is sure she's making it up, calls the other half delusional, crazed. This is implausible. Humans weren’t created with stitching attached to others, no matter how Lena felt. The other half is a cemented belief. A certainty. A feeling like she knows, she knows, she _does_ , she's sure. It's screaming at her. Kara is dead. There’s a part inside of Lena that was Kara’s, wholeheartedly, and now it’s gone limp and weak and died. 

Some part inside of her feels like she exists like a heart for Kara. If Kara is dead...

Lena doesn't know what that makes her. Doesn't _want_ to know what that makes her. 

Exhaustion pulls at her bones, settles in her eyelids. Lena glances at the journal, clasped loosely in her hands. Her scrawl is slanted to the right, nearly illegible, except for the title. She tucks it away, with a load of books around the same size. Hiding in plain sight.

Then, she slumps her way towards her bed, and slides in it. It's almost 11 am, but Lena thinks she can sleep forever. Lillian won't bother with her, she hopes. Let her forget this painful ache in her bones, the hollow in her chest that pangs every now and then, reminding her that the string attaching her to blonde hair and sunny smiles is gone.

Her legs are like ice. The sheets don't warm up, and she stays cold. Lena falls asleep quickly enough, though, and she dreams of blue eyes and blonde hair and a smile that makes the whole world go away and then she dreams of a deep, dark hole that never ends. Dark enough to swallow the sun.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my tumblr is @mebwrites feel free to ask questions or yell at me


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